What I know and what I don't know.

I can officially, without a drop of doubt in my mind, now say that the worst month of my life is behind me. You have been gone a month. It's been a month since we talked. It's been a month since we looked into each others eyes. It's been a month since we said "I love you". It's been a month since we kissed. And like all measures of time, it's one I can't take back.

Time is an interesting concept. One that I don't really even understand anymore, to be honest. I used to think we 'had time on our side'. That was not the case. Time robbed us. Or maybe something else robbed time. An hour seems long when you want it to be short. When you want an hour to last forever, it rushes by. Certain years of my life seem to have lasted ages, when others I had hardly remember because they whisked by. It seems like forever since I last saw you. But then it also seems like just a moment ago. I don't know what time is. I know you didn't either. We used to talk about quantum physics and agree, there was a lot more to space and time than humanity could calculate.

I remember our last kiss. It was at 8:20 pm on Friday, October 24th (2014). It was gentle and loving. We looked into each others eyes. It wasn't rushed. There is no way we could have ever known that was to be our last kiss, that you would take your last breath just five hours later. But considering it was, I have no regrets about that kiss. It was perfect.

I also remember our first kiss. It was on Sunday, January 27th 2013 at about 2 am. You said, "Can I kiss you now!?" It was as if you'd been waiting forever to do so. Maybe you had. Maybe you'd been waiting since our last lifetime together was cut short. No one knows when their first kiss will happen either. One may hope – or maybe it comes out of the blue. Eagerness and lust filling you up. Excitement standing in line with breath mints, chapstick, and impatience. Our first kiss was perfect.

I imagined our kiss on the altar thousands of times. The one that would happen after we got to say "I do". I imagined it as a collage of all the best romance movie kisses – expect better. It would be fueled with true love, excitement, passion, hope, destiny, and faith. It was going to be perfect. It still will be, someday, whatever that means.

What I never once imagined was that it wouldn't happen. I was so sure... wasn't I? Why hadn't I ever considered things could have taken a dark turn, as they did? Had I stuffed premonitions and ominous occurrences aside, and just assumed, with false hope, that we would get what we so thought we deserved – real happiness? Isn't that what the point of life is? Love? Did life deliver us what we deserved? Was our twenty months of true connection and love what life had in store for us? Did we get to squeeze as much love as most beings have in seventy years into that short time? I will never know.

There's not a lot of things I know right now. I am confused about this thing we call time. I am up in the air about the specifics of afterlife. I'm trying to decide if there's a difference between fate, destiny, and happenstance. I am hopeful, but not one-hundred-percent sure that you are watching over me. I'm not sure what to gather from the visions, the mediums, and the signs that have been appearing everywhere. I don't know where you are, I hope it's not just in dust and ashes inside of a cold urn. I don't know why you died. I don't know if there is anything I could have done. I don't know if this is a part of a master plan. I don't know what our children would have looked like, if they would have been blonde or brunette, like we often thought about. I don't know if I will ever be a mother. I don't know if we only have one soul mate. I don't know if I will ever love again. I don't know if you will come back as my child, like you told me you would. I don't know how I'm still standing. I don't know how the hair is still growing on my legs and how my cycle continues to flow, when my heart feels like it has stopped, though I can hear it beat.... beat... beat. I don't know what's next.

But, there's a few things I do know.

"I know that I am glad we had this time together. I am glad we shared our love, even though time cut it short. I also know that I still have all the love. It didn't go anywhere. In fact, it still grows. As the grief grows, the love grows. I have all this love, you gave it to me, and that is your gift to me. That is the biggest gift anyone could receive. Because now I know love, I own love, and I have your love inside of me. And I can share it, like you did. I know that my life will never be the same. I will be a new kind of woman. I will be a new kind of teacher. I will be a new kind of lover. I will be you, in some ways. I KNOW that you are inside of me – not in all the ways I want (giggity) – but you are here. I know that I would not be able to wake up, get out of bed, carry on a conversation, take care of myself, eat, even laugh, for god's sake, without you being in me. I know you are carrying me. In what way that is, I do not know at all, and I never will – but I know you are and that you always will be."

I love you.